Some of you will recognise the chap in the blue shirt from our last post about the Bridge Podcast. His name is Steve Keevil and he’s running for election as a councillor in River ward.

Steve invited Medway Eyes (that’s Rew and Anna on the left) to meet Keith Taylor, the Green MEP for the South East (foot on stump) and members of the Medway Green Party to talk about the new bus station that is to be built on the Paddock. Trees have already been felled in preparation for this, despite reports that only 360 of Medway’s 250,000 population have actually been consulted about this (and even then, 69% of those canvassed didn’t want the station to be built on the Paddock). We discussed this lack of consultation and the environmental impact of the project. We were surprised to learn that Medway Renaissance and SEEDA are no more (something that we hadn’t seen in the local press) and pleased to discover how Brussels can sometimes help to bring councils to account.

We took the Greens for a walk along Desolation Row to discuss our ongoing multimedia project, the area’s history, empty shops and the tragedy of the Theatre Royal. There was general agreement that what we were walking through didn’t feel like a city, and we went on to discuss the individual character of each of Medway’s distinct towns.

It was interesting to discover how much we all had in common, something that party politics will never quite be able to grasp – at least not while infantile point scoring, careerism and ideology are deemed more important than dialogue.

One last note: At no point did the Greens ever preach policy at us or ask if they could count on our votes, and we – not being party political – found that very refreshing.